


The Apartment

by spaceorphan



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4740605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceorphan/pseuds/spaceorphan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little piece about Kurt and Blaine and their first NYC apartment, set not long after Dreams Come True.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Apartment

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a good friend of mine's real apartment in NYC, right down to the curtains at the end

Their first apartment together after moving back to New York was tiny—a shoebox really. The bedroom was barely able to fit a bed and dresser, and had a tiny closet that Kurt had spent the last six years attempting to cram every last article of clothing he ever owned into. Blaine eventually began to joke that they should share the same wardrobe since there wasn’t enough space for his clothes. There was a bathroom the size of a closet, a hallway that doubled as a kitchen, and a living room-slash-study-slash-guest room-slash studio for Kurt-slash-practice room for Blaine-slash-nursery for Katie. And, god, there were days that Kurt thought he’d suffocate in such a small place, but today was not one of them. Now that the apartment was completely empty, it felt huge. 

He had missed the loft, at first, with all of its space. He and Blaine still fought from time to time, sniped at each other over little things when they had spent too much time in the apartment together, living nearly on top of each other. Some days he had wanted to trade in the actual walls for thin privacy curtains if it meant he had room again. But there were things about the loft he most definitely didn’t miss; Rachel’s singing at six in the morning in the shower, Santana’s impromptu visits where she’d whirl in like a tornado, Sam’s attempt to literally become one with the couch, or the fact that he could now slam the door to the bedroom shut if he need a moment to himself.

At the end of the night, though, no matter how hard they had fought, when Blaine climbed in bed and snuggled next to him, he didn’t mind sharing his space. And even with the sounds of the city buzzing just outside, it was quiet, and peaceful, and a place just for them, and Kurt wouldn’t have traded that in for anything. 

Sometimes he missed their actual first apartment, the one they sublet for a few months in Lima. The complex had just been built, everything was new and clean, bright white walls, sleek black counters and cabinets, appliances that were silver and shiny and wide, and it had a shower, a bathtub, and a place to put a washer and dryer. It had seemed like such a perfect place for the two of them to start out. But it had its downsides, too. It took ten minutes to drive anywhere remotely close to civilization, gay marriage may have been legal not long after they got married, but that didn’t stop the middle-aged couple with a family of two from sneering at them every time they left the apartment together, and there wasn’t anything to do after eight at night. 

In comparison, the New York apartment was old, the floor had warped causing everything to fall in one direction or the other, the plaster on the walls was cracking, and you could hear just about everything going on in the entire building. But it had charm, Blaine had said, trying to be optimistic when they first looked at it. They had been to a dozen other places in their price range, most of them smaller and dirtier. It was New York, Blaine reminded him. They couldn’t be choosy or someone would snap it up. So, they did the best they could, Kurt finding bargains at little shops he found in the city, unique artwork to cover up the cracks, decorative knick knacks to distract from the awful paint job they weren’t allowed to change, and various types of strange plants Blaine kept finding to line the windowsills. It was a strange amalgamation of things, but it was theirs.

The neighborhood wasn’t so bad either. Sure, sirens went off at least once a day. One of the neighbors had a small dog that barked constantly. And there was this tiny “barber shop” that never had any customers or employees, and advertised that you could get a haircut, a shave, and “other services”. It’s a front for the mafia, Blaine insisted with delight every time they walked by it on the way to the subway. But for the most part, it was a peaceful neighborhood that Kurt had fallen in love with. 

A small grocer stood on one corner of their block and while a coffee shop, one where Blaine would flirt with the middle-aged barista to get his off-the-menu spicy mocha coffee every morning, sat on the other. The Black Box theater was just two blocks away. Kurt had had his first real acting job there, and he and Blaine would see whatever show they put on when they could until the owners gave them a lifetime pass. There had been a hole-in-the-wall piano bar down the street, where Blaine had spent every Saturday night for a good six months singing showtunes for tips until the place had unfortunately shut down. And a little park, close enough that Kurt and Blaine would walk to, hand in hand, and sit on one of the benches curled up with another, and chat as they gazed over the river to Manhattan. Later, they would push Katie in a stroller to the park, often being stopped by women walking their dogs, who cooed over their daughter.

There was a laundromat just a block north, where Kurt did the laundry every Sunday morning. He befriended an elderly woman by the name of Gladys there. They’d talk about their husbands, and fashion, and celebrity gossip. Gladys would talk about her grandkids who lived in Georgia, and Kurt would talk about his dad back in Ohio. And when Katie was born, Gladys knitted a blanket for her. They chatted away as they waited for their clothes to be done, unless Gladys talked about her small life living in New York City, and Kurt would listen intently, amazed that one person could have so many adventures in one place. Kurt thought it would be a sad thing, the last time he did laundry with her, having to tell her he was leaving the neighborhood. Gladys had just laughed, and said he could always come visit, and promised not to pass away until she saw him as a star on Broadway. 

Kurt paced around the room, the golden light of evening filtering in through the window. The room was still, the air heavy from everything that had happened in it. The walls were still the puke green color they had always been, the hardwood floor still creaked beneath his feet, smudges on the ceiling he wasn’t sure how they got there. He remembered when they first moved in, and how ugly he thought the room was. Now he looked at in fondness. So many memories, so many things that happened in that one little room…

The fall and rise of Rachel Berry’s love life, everything from she and Jesse breaking up at a cast party they hosted only for Kurt to find them making out on he and Blaine’s bed ten minutes later to years later when they all sat down and had a very adult discussion about surrogacy. 

Their third anniversary, when Brittany and Santana insisted they all spend it together, only to have Santana smash one of Kurt’s nice glasses against the wall when she lost at Pictionary and Brittany suggest they end the night with a foursome that would bind them all together forever that they politely declined.

The only week that Sam spent with them. He had been convinced that the place was haunted, and kept insisting that the scraping he heard coming from the walls wasn’t an infestation of mice, but the souls who had died in the building being trapped and wanting to get out. 

Mercedes finding out she would be opening for Beyonce. 

Elliott proposing to his boyfriend. 

Artie and Tina hooking up in the bathroom. Twice.

The first (and last) showing of Artie’s roommate’s girlfriend’s student horror (comedy?) film called Ledges of Fire.

Blaine’s entire History of Music 202 class showing up for an all-nighter for a final. 

Kurt practicing for an audition one day only to have his upstairs neighbor join him for a duet. 

Every time Cooper ended up in New York for an audition, and forcing them out of their bed because he insisted he needed his beauty sleep. 

Their first Christmas alone together, when they didn’t have any money, and only a small tree, and spent the evening slow dancing and drinking wine and promises of love making instead of presents. 

The time they had a marathon of sex after Blaine had been away on a traveling show for three months, and Burt and Carole had shown up for a surprise visit during some very hot couch sex. (Thank god they went with leather, and Blaine was able to clean up while Kurt took his parents out to pick up dinner.) 

Kurt smirked at the last thought. They must have done it in every inch of the apartment. He had no regrets about that (except the one very fail attempt at shower sex), and he was amazed the apartment didn’t reek from sex life.

Of course there were other smells that lingered, too, Blaine’s blueberry pancakes, the pencils and paper Kurt used for his designs, lemon dish soap, raspberry hairgel, Axe bodyspray, and Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder.

Smells weren’t the only phantoms in the room. Kurt could still hear things, Blaine trying to write music at the piano, a vacuum from down the hall, the buzz of streetlight just outside the window, the familiar pings of the game shows Mr. Davis below them loved to watch, Katie’s laughter. They were all still there, in the room with him, even in the unusual quietness of the early evening. 

It struck him, then, just how much he had grown to love his little apartment, with all the knicks and scratches of their life, all their marks to leave, along with all the others who had lived there before them. He and Blaine had started really started their life there together–not the loft, not the Lima apartment. They had grown up and lived and fought and loved and enjoyed each other all in this little spot. God, there was a part of him that was going to miss the crappy little apartment. 

“Kurt!” Blaine entered the room, Katie wiggling against him. “The super just called and said he’s gonna be gone by six if we want to get the keys to him tonight. We should go anyway, Katie’s getting fussy and we should feed her soon. Kurt?”

Kurt wiped the tears from his eyes, hoping his husband wouldn’t notice. Except Blaine always noticed. 

“I’m going to miss it, too,” Blaine said softly.

Kurt tried to shrug it off. “This place is a hole, the house is much better.” 

The house with a real kitchen for Kurt to work in, and a real yard for Katie to play in, and a real third bedroom to host guests. 

Blaine chuckled because he knew Kurt better than that.

There was no need to say goodbye, not really. They had said goodbye two nights earlier, when they had spent their last night in the apartment, Katie at Rachel’s, nothing but a few boxes and a mattress around them, nothing but a night of a little sex and a lot of talking and not much sleeping. (Much like their first night in the apartment, though that had been a lot of sex and little talking but still not much sleeping.) 

But Kurt gave it one more look around, just to remember the feeling one last time. 

As they headed back through the kitchen, Kurt noticed one thing they had left. “The window dressing!” he said, stopping in the kitchen to face the slit of a window. 

“Kurt, you hated those curtains,” Blaine said, amused. 

It was true. He remembered the first week in the apartment when Blaine had come home proudly with something to cover the window, fabric with a pattern of cowboys on it. Cowboys who were shirtless, and in tight tight jeans, and god it was the tackiest thing. And oh how they had fought about that, too, but after Blaine argued that nearly everything in the apartment was Kurt’s, he let him have the curtains. And years later, he was so used to them, he had forgotten they were even there. 

“I know, but they aren’t that bad,” Kurt said with a tug on one end. 

“They’re hideous,” Blaine said wiggling his eyebrows. “I bought them to prove a point.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow, but Blaine cut off any remark he might have with a quick kiss to the lips. “C’mon, let’s go.” 

“Go, go, go,” Katie echoed. 

“You really want to leave them here for the next tenants?” 

Blaine gave a shrug. “Sure, why not leave a small piece of us behind. Give ‘um something to wonder about.” 

Blaine held out his hand. Katie did, too, mirroring him, crying out, “Da!”

Kurt clasped his husband’s hand, and kissed his daughter’s forehead, and the three of them left, turning out the light, and locking the door behind them, closing the door on one chapter of their life, ready to start another.


End file.
